by Sarah Rayne
‘Now that,’ said Jude, looking up, ‘I find surprising.’
‘I believe he has even wondered about asking if you would consider a commission for a new national piece of music.’
‘A German anthem?’
‘Perhaps not quite that. But a—lodestar for our young people.’
‘A rallying call,’ said Burkhardt, and at his side, Irma Greise murmured, ‘A call to the golden youth of Europe,’ and looked very directly at Jude. It was probably fanciful to imagine she licked her lips.
‘Darling, if Hitler or anybody else is really placing hopes for the future in golden youth, anything less like a golden youth than Jude would be hard to—’
‘I regret,’ said Jude to Karl Vogel, ‘that I do not compose to order, Herr. If your master really does want a – what did you call it—?’
‘A rallying call,’ said Burkhardt again, and Vogel frowned.
‘A lodestar,’ he said severely.
‘Ah yes, that was the expression. But rallying cries and lodestar calls are not my forte, Herr Vogel. You’re talking to the wrong composer.’ Jude sipped his brandy and added, poker-faced, ‘Has Herr Hitler considered Schoenberg? Or even Hindemith?’
Vogel stared at him coldly. ‘They would not be appropriate,’ he said at last. ‘Were you not aware that Herr Hitler has ordered the boycotting of Hindemith’s works and that Schoenberg has been outlawed by the Party? Both gentlemen have left Germany.’
‘Dear me,’ said Jude, deadpan, and Vogel looked at him suspiciously.
But he only said, ‘It is a pity you are not interested in the Führer’s idea, Herr Weissman.’
‘Isn’t it? But I don’t accept commissions.’
‘Indeed? But even Mozart had to trim his sails to the prevailing wind, I think?’
Mozart again. Jude replied offhandedly, ‘So it’s said. And now I wonder if you will excuse me if I retire early? It was a long journey today and I shall need to begin work early tomorrow.’
‘Ah yes, the rehearsals for your Devil’s Piper performance.’ This from von Drumm, his jowly face smiling.
Jude stood for a moment looking round the table. A smile curved his lips and he said softly, ‘Dear me, were you expecting to hear that at the concert? Didn’t I tell you I had changed my mind?’
‘You have changed your—’
‘Certainly,’ said Jude. ‘I’ve decided that we shan’t be playing it.’
And made good his exit.
He went directly to his room, but he did not immediately go to bed. He hung up his dinner jacket and loosened the black evening tie, and perched on the windowsill, studying the hill structure, wreathed in shadow now, a crouching bulk against the skyline.
That last remark would certainly stir up those two rogues Vogel and von Drumm. There was no doubt but that they were after the music, of course: Vogel had given that away by persistently bringing Mozart into the conversation. Jude wondered how much Vogel knew and how much he believed.
‘A lot of rubbish, of course,’ Jude’s grandfather had always said, drawing down his brows. ‘I never believed a word of it.’
His father had said cautiously that it should not be forgotten that Mozart had been something of a prankster.
But Jude had always liked the legend of his own great-great grandfather in Vienna in the early nineteenth century, forming that tenuous friendship with Mozart’s only surviving son, being given the two or three sheets of music score paper in return for some favour or other.
‘Probably of no worth whatsoever,’ his great-great grandfather was supposed to have said, handing the music on down through the family. ‘Not even written by Mozart, of course; his son remembered him buying it from one of his disreputable associates while he was writing The Magic Flute. It might have come from anywhere.’
It was not difficult to visualise Mozart buying a piece of music from a starving gypsy or street ballad singer down on his luck, perhaps even cheerfully bestowing the last of his own dwindling resources in the process. But it was odd that he had apparently kept the single sheet of music so carefully.
It was at this point in Jude’s thoughts that he became aware of a light burning within the hill structure.
As he leaned over, trying to see more, two dark-clad figures detached themselves from the shadows surrounding the castle and crossed the courtyard towards the lights.
Irma Greise and Otto Burkhardt.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Black Duke had the morning scents and the morning aura of every hotel Isarel had ever stayed in. Freshly ground coffee and a faint pleasant undertow of freshly baked rolls. People nodded polite ‘good mornings’ to one another on their way in or out of breakfast and collected daily newspapers which were neatly arranged on the reception desk.
As they ate breakfast, it occurred to Isarel that Moira was rather quiet and although at first he assumed this was because she was nervous about what was ahead, he revised this almost at once. Ciaran, carefully casual, had referred to a fiercely over-protective family background, and Isarel understood that Moira had hardly travelled beyond the small Irish village. She’s being wary, he thought. She’s unused to hotels and she’s worried in case she does something wrong. The fact that Moira had naturally good manners and did not need to worry, did not come into it.
Isarel, buttering a warm roll, felt unexpectedly angry at the family – the father particularly, hadn’t Ciaran said? – who had kept Moira in such a stifled, narrow environment. This was the twentieth century, for goodness’ sake and Moira ought to be enjoying boyfriends and clothes and some kind of social life. Certainly she ought to be pursuing a job, if not a full-blown career: she was intelligent enough to make a university place a fairly safe bet, in fact. Something ought to be done about it after this crazy adventure was over. Isarel was aware of an inward twinge of half-cynical, half-wry amusement. Pygmalion and Galatea at your age? Or even – God forbid! – King Cophetua and the beggarmaid? That would be very unwise indeed, that would be absolutely mad. And anything less like a beggarmaid—But Moira was so obviously intelligent and she was attractive and perceptive; Isarel thought it would afford anyone pleasure to bring her out of whatever narrow, unhealthy world she had been living in. Svengali and Trilby was probably nearer than King Cophetua, which brought them full circle to music again.
‘Do we take the car?’ he demanded, as they finished their coffee.
‘I don’t know. How far is the castle, have we any idea?’
‘I noticed a turning off the main road a bit farther back,’ said Moira. ‘Just as we drove in.’
‘Oh yes, I saw that as well – was that for the castle? Well then, it’s only ten minutes’ walk or so, but we’d better drive as near as we can, because we might need the car later. But we could park at the side of the road and walk up. All right, both of you?’
But it was to Moira Isarel looked as he said this, and Moira understood that it was his off-hand way of asking could she manage the walk.
She said at once, ‘Great. Let’s be as inconspicuous as possible.’
They came out of the Black Duke and into the watery morning sunlight, and as they drove down the road, they saw a small group of people going towards the castle.
‘Serse’s People,’ said Isarel, pointing to them. ‘They’re beginning to arrive. So that’s what they look like. They’re not quite what I was imagining.’
‘They’re very purposeful,’ said Ciaran.
‘And if they’re students, they’re much less rowdy than any students I ever had anything to do with,’ said Isarel rather wryly. ‘They look smug, don’t they? The chosen race, already. If people are going up there now, we should manage to gate-crash without too much difficulty. Here’s where we turn off, by the look of it. Yes, “Eisenach Castle – private road”.’
‘And a poster about the concert underneath,’ said Moira.
‘With the symbol again. That group were all wearing it around their necks, did you see it? Like ikons on silver chains. Do we kno
w what the symbol is? It’s nearly the Aryan Cross, but it isn’t quite. Ciaran, have you ever seen anything like it?’
‘I have,’ said Ciaran.
‘Where?’
‘Carved into the side of Ahasuerus’s tomb.’
For a moment no one spoke, and then Isarel said, ‘Is that meant to make us feel better?’ He pulled in to the side of the road. There was no conventional pedestrian path, but there were areas of roughish scrubland at intervals, marked with tyre tracks and oil patches, as if cars quite often parked there.
‘We’re going in on a wing and a prayer, aren’t we?’ said Ciaran, as they got out.
‘I’m afraid so. We’ll have to be ready for anything. Try to look like a Serse, Ciaran, you don’t know who might be watching.’
As they went up the track, Isarel felt the atavistic fear forcing its way to the surface again. Finally and at last, I’m approaching the nightmare mansion, he thought. I’m going back. For a moment he was unsure whether he was in his own time or Jude’s and as they went up the rough track in the morning sunshine, the sense of dislocation increased, because the Eisenach he had known and walked through in dreams had no reality outside of lonely midnight shadows and creeping darknesses.
It ought to have been easy to dismiss the memories and concentrate on getting inside and rescuing Kate and capturing Ahasuerus. Isarel tried to do so, but his entire body was strung up to a pitch of such extreme anticipation that his heart was beating erratically and his stomach was churning. This is the place of dreams. The galleried hall where Jude gave that glittering concert; the tapestried dining room, the dark brooding bedchambers . . . In another minute we shall be round the curve in the track and it will be there.
He had thought he was prepared, but as they came round the curve in the road, the castle was suddenly in front of them: its huge, brutish outline rearing up against the night sky, the dark turrets silhouetted against the sky, the narrow windows like slitted eyes. The sight of it slammed so violently into Isarel’s senses that the landscape blurred and for a moment a great weight seemed to press down on him. There was the impression of something dark blotting out the light.
It was Ciaran who said, ‘Dear God, would you look at that,’ and Isarel forced back the suffocating waves of the past. The present came jarringly into focus again.
Surrounding the castle was a high brick wall, black and forbidding and easily twenty feet in height. It was smooth and impenetrable, and it was topped with thick coils of barbed wire. Directly in front of them, set into the wall, were wrought-iron gates, lined with sheets of iron.
Moira said, ‘They’ve shut the world out.’
‘I think it’s more than that,’ said Isarel, staring. ‘I think they’ve shut something in.’
‘At least the gates are open.’
‘Yes. Do we just walk in?’ Moira was looking at the gates rather nervously.
‘That Serse group’s just walked in,’ said Isarel, and nodded towards the group they had seen on the road who were going through the castle gates. ‘If they can do it, so can we. We’ll go in with huge panache and we’ll get away with it. And if anyone stops us, we’ve come to find out about the concert.’
‘And maybe join the faithful,’ murmured Moira.
Ciaran, who was looking back down the track, said, ‘I think this is where I melt into the background. Vogel will probably have his own people beyond those gates and we’ve agreed I’m to keep out of sight.’
‘Where—’
‘I think I’ll walk all around the outside walls to see if there’s a breach anywhere. If I find a back door, I’ll go in. But from then on, it’s anybody’s guess.’ He turned back and looked at them. ‘God keep you both,’ he said suddenly.
Isarel stared at him. I think that’s the first properly conventional religious thing he’s ever said to me. To his astonishment, he heard his own voice reply, ‘Shema Y’Isroel, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echod.’
Moira said in a whisper, ‘What is that?’
‘I think,’ said Ciaran, his eyes on Isarel, ‘that it’s the ancient Hebrew affirmation of the reality of God. But I could be wrong.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ said Isarel shortly. ‘Shall we get on with it?’
‘All right.’ Ciaran looked at them both, and Moira said,
‘Please find Kate.’
‘With God’s help.’ He smiled briefly and then turned away. Isarel looked at Moira.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Approaching the gates was the eeriest experience yet. Isarel was beginning to feel very cold, as if he was about to step into an icy landscape. As if sunshine and the birdsong would not penetrate beyond the iron gates and the wall. I’m going into the nightmare, but the nightmare itself is starting to distort, because it’s bright daylight and there’s the sound of birdsong overhead and scrunching autumn leaves underfoot. There’s the faint drone of traffic from the highroad below, and Serse’s People all around us.
Moira said very softly, ‘We’re going back, aren’t we? It feels as if Time stopped here and never got wound up again.’ Isarel glanced at her, and she continued in a more practical voice, ‘And we’d better keep an eye out for Vogel, hadn’t we?’
‘Yes. You’ll recognise him again?’
‘I think so. Yes, of course I will. It’ll feel odd seeing him in these surroundings, though, won’t it? After everything we’ve found out and pieced together. And,’ said Moira thoughtfully, ‘I can’t help wondering what that other Vogel was like. Karl. I know you said his name never got into any of the history books, but did you ever see any photographs at all?’
‘No. And I don’t know much about him. But,’ said Isarel, staring up at the castle, ‘he was the man my father blamed for Jude’s death at Nuremberg.’
‘Jude was executed at Nuremberg?’
‘Yes.’ Isarel glanced about them, but although a few more sets of Serse’s People were coming up the hill behind them, they were well out of earshot. I’m getting paranoid, thought Isarel angrily, but when he spoke again, he kept his voice low.
‘There was a series of minor trials after Goering and Hess and their ilk were sentenced; to deal with the smaller fry. They didn’t get much publicity, but Jude’s trial was made very public indeed. There was a huge backlash of feeling, and it was then that he was dubbed “Judas”. My father once said that the whole world hated him.’ He paused and then said, ‘Jude was shot as a traitor in the yard of Nuremberg Prison in 1946 and his body was cremated. The world thought he was hanged from the same gibbet used for von Ribbentrop and intended for Goering and they were led to think it because it appeased their anger to rank Jude alongside Goering. But my grandmother had to be given the death certificate, and it stated quite clearly that Jude died from rifle-shot wounds.’
‘You hate it, don’t you?’ said Moira. ‘Jude’s death? I would if he was my ancestor.’
‘Yes.’ Isarel registered her use of the word ‘ancestor’, rather than ‘grandfather’, and he guessed it was because she could not associate the dark romance of Jude with such an elderly expression. Was she so young that she saw Jude as romantic? But for all her youth, she was very far from naive. With some perverse idea of testing her, he said, ‘Jude was an evil, traitorous bastard – that was proved beyond doubt. The weight of the evidence against him at Nuremberg was overwhelming. He helped to send thousands of Jews to the gas chambers, he actually took his orchestra into Auschwitz and gave recitals while they were gassing thousands of the prisoners and incinerating the bodies.’
‘Why? To cover up the screams or what? I don’t mean to sound flippant,’ said Moira. ‘Because I do know that what was done to the Jews was horrific and appalling. But I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not sure I understand either,’ said Isarel. ‘But according to my father, he played the Devil’s Piper suite.’
‘Oh!’ said Moira. And then, ‘To subdue the prisoners?’
‘It’s the likeliest explanation,’ said Isarel dryl
y. ‘He deserved to die and he deserved to be branded as “Judas”.’
He stopped, and without hesitation, Moira said softly, ‘But for all that he was a genius, a brilliant, charismatic musician and composer, and you can’t bear to think of him being dragged out of some wretched cell at Nuremberg, and thrust up against a wall and shot.’
‘No. How did you know?’
‘I can’t bear it either,’ said Moira.
Ciaran had gone stealthily around the outside of the wall, keeping in its lee, but strongly aware of the towering bulk of the castle within. The size of the castle had surprised him: it was much larger than he had been expecting, and he had thought, although he had not said, that if Conrad Vogel was able to command the use of a place such as this for his concert, he was far more powerful and successful than they had been bargaining for.
The wall had surprised him, but he had been unsure of whether this was because of his ignorance of the world. Presumably people today liked privacy as much as they ever had, and anyone who owned a large estate would take precautions against burglars and vandals. But there was something harsh and cruel and forbidding about the wall and the barbed wire and Ciaran thought that if Kate was being held somewhere behind those walls, it was going to be very hard indeed to get her out. The thought of her helpless and frightened was almost more than he could bear. Had they been wrong not to involve the police? Ciaran was conscious all over again of his years inside the monastery, away from the world, and he thought with fierce bitterness that if Kate had been threatened by Satan or his emissaries, he could have fought them better than he could fight this impenetrable fortress. If Eisenach had a breach in any of its defences, they were not detectable.
And then he reached the outermost boundary on the western rim, and saw the swell of the hillside and the jutting brick chimneys.
He stood for a moment, frowning, thinking he had surely seen something like this before – old newsreels? – and trying to see, as well, if this would provide a way of getting into the rear of the castle unseen.
